Lewis Hamilton suffered embarrassment in Australian Grand Prix qualifying by failing to even reach the top 10.

The Briton looked uncomfortable throughout the session but navigated his way through Q1 easily enough. However, in the second part of the session, he failed to put a strong lap together and left himself in danger.

After failing to improve with his final flying lap, Hamilton was ninth and on the cusp of the danger zone. And when Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll found the pace to improve their times, he was condemned to 11th on the grid for Sunday’s race in Melbourne.

“Are we safe or not?” asked the nervous seven-time F1 champion over the radio after his disappointing last lap. Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington replied: “Negative, we’ve just been bumped,” after Tsunoda and Stroll saved themselves.

It comes after a similarly difficult practice day on Friday. FP2 was particularly grim for Hamilton with Mercedes experimenting with his car set-up – resulting in a very difficult W15 machine to drive and leaving the Briton down in 18th on the timesheets.

Speaking glumly at the end of the day’s running, Hamilton said: “I obviously don’t feel great. We had one of the worst sessions I’ve probably had for a long time. FP1 generally felt quite good – the car actually in FP1, run one, felt the best it’s ever felt, then it just got worse and worse.

“I made some changes, big changes into… well, we made some big changes into FP2, and it was tough. After that session I feel the least confident I’ve ever felt with this car, but there are positives from that FP1 run that we did.”

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Max Verstappen was the unsurprising pole-sitter with a strong couple of laps in Q3. He was under pressure from both Ferrari drivers throughout that final part of the session, but Carlos Sainz could only manage second while Charles Leclerc had to settle for fifth after making a mistake on his final lap.

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Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez is well-placed for Sunday third on the grid. Leclerc’s aborted final lap left him fifth, sandwiched between the McLarens with Lando Norris ahead and hometown hero Oscar Piastri sixth.

George Russell fared better than Hamilton and managed to reach Q3 but then only went seventh fastest. He will start the race ahead of Tsunoda while Stroll pipped his Aston Martin team-mate Fernando Alonso to ninth.